Is the NPT being Overtaken by Events?

What security role does the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT) play nowadays and can it be strengthened to
address real world nuclear challenges more effectively? These are
questions that should be asked when states parties and NGOs meet in
Geneva on April 28 for the next Preparatory Committee (PrepCom)
meeting for the 2010 Review Conference.

With the Chair of the 2008 PrepCom, Ambassador Volodymyr
Yelchenko of Ukraine, hoping to devote more time to substantive
issues than was possible at the 2007 PrepCom, where a stand-off
over the agenda paralyzed the meeting for several days, what will
be the priority political, substantive and procedural issues
discussed? Five core issues are likely to come up in different
forms:

Resolving current nuclear proliferation concerns and preventing
new ones arising, with Iran the current big worry as North Korea's
programme is now being dismantled;

Nuclear disarmament and concerns that new nuclear weapons and
doctrines are being introduced under cover of much-heralded
reductions;

A growing clamour for the expansion of sophisticated nuclear
energy technologies and the building of advanced programmes in
hitherto non-nuclear countries;

Universality, a traditional cornerstone of Arab concerns about
Israel and the failure to bring a nuclear weapon free zone in the
Middle East to the starting block, but now with the additional
destabilizing challenge of the US-India nuclear deal; and

Institutional 'deficit' - the lack of structures or mechanisms
for NPT parties to address compliance, implementation,
accountability and withdrawal issues directly or effectively.

Working papers on all these issues were submitted during the
2007 PrepCom, and further arguments, developments and ideas are to
be expected in 2008. But where do all these aspirational and (more
or less) practical suggestions and proposals go? Some carry forward
consensus agreements from previous NPT Review Conferences, such as
the 'Thirteen Steps' on disarmament. Some are endorsed by consensus
or near-consensus resolutions of the UN General Assembly, but still
they don't seem to be able to be taken forward in the NPT context.
Indeed, many are dismissed as ideologically or politically
motivated, and so dismissed out of hand by Western governments that
like to think of themselves as pragmatic. As governments prepare
their statements and people gather in Geneva for the 2008 PrepCom,
they need to ask what it's all for. The NPT review process comes
across more as theatre than real security building - a lot of sound
and fury signifying... well, if not nothing, then what?

Because the second PrepCom has fewer issues requiring actual
decisions, many diplomats are sounding up-beat about the prospects
of the 2008 meeting. However, the prospects for success at the 2010
review conference are more challenging, and there is already
considerable discussion of what needs to be done to ensure a
successful review conference in 2010. Leaving aside for the moment
the important question of what constitutes 'success' in NPT terms,
underlying these discussions is anxiety about whether the NPT
regime will 'survive' another failure like the 2005 Review
Conference.

Some are sanguine - less inclined to worry because they believe
that the regime survives because it is in the security interests of
a great number of countries, regardless of what happens in the
meetings and review process. Some seem to regard the meetings as
more of a hindrance than a help, perhaps because the strengthened
review process has resulted in more opportunities for the arsenals
and policies of those continuing to possess nuclear weapons to be
scrutinised and for pressure to be exerted for better progress
towards nuclear disarmament.

Others - including many who advocated in 1995 and 2000 for the
review process to be strengthened and made more relevant - worry
that the meetings do little more than air grievances and expose the
NPT's structural problems, making it especially difficult to
address real world problems or manage meaningful agreements on
contested issues.

In recent years, it has become clear that the NPT as currently
interpreted and implemented lacks the institutional rules,
practices and powers to deal effectively with proliferation
challenges. When North Korea announced its withdrawal in 2003,
there was no role for NPT parties, and the Security Council
appeared paralyzed. Unable even to address whether Article X could
be legitimately evoked for withdrawal by a state that was already
being suspected and investigated for noncompliance, the NPT
meetings were reduced to dodging the problem by having the Chair
take custody of North Korea's name plate. The solution might have
been expedient at the time, but it exposed the Treaty to ridicule.
Similarly, the 2005 Review Conference failed to address
noncompliance and nuclear insecurity because it couldn't agree a
phrase on its agenda. Diplomats and academics who track these
things closely can point out that procedure is politics and the
agenda was contested because some of the nuclear weapon states
wanted to roll back or weaken decisions and agreements undertaken
in 1995 and 2000 and others wanted to stop this happening. But to
people around the world, trying to prevent the spread and
development of new and further nuclear weapons, such failures and
stalemates look like dereliction of duty by the supposed guardians
of international security. And again in 2007, the meeting agenda
was held to ransom because a state wanted to avoid being held
accountable for not fully and transparently implementing its NPT
obligations.

Diplomacy is, of course, an art of the possible. More
fundamental questions lurk below these debates: what is the future
of nuclear weapons and is the NPT being overtaken by events?

Two very different futures beckon on the horizon, depending on
which way we turn.

In one, the nuclear possessors continue to rely on and value
nuclear weapons, though some may continue to cut the size of their
overgrown cold war arsenals. Iran continues to pursue uranium
enrichment and Israel perhaps seeks legitimacy along the lines of
the US-India nuclear deal. In that scenario, other states -
starting probably in the Middle East, but no-one should discount
significant political players like Brazil or Japan reassessing
their policies as well - may conclude that being ignored among the
majority of non-nuclear weapon states is no longer in their
national interest. The NPT's high level of participation would
undoubtedly act as a brake for some, but if a few states managed to
withdraw without becoming politically isolated or incurring
crippling penalties for their nuclear or defence industries, then
it would not take long for the Treaty's credibility to erode beyond
repair.

The alternative scenario is altogether more cheerful. Though the
second, January 2008, Wall Street Journal essay from George
Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn and a stellar
cast of US academics and former policymakers, was more cautious
than the ground-breaking first article the 'Four Horsemen'
published in January 2007 (both reproduced below), it continued to
propound the theme that nuclear disarmament is in US as well as
global interests and that the United States should take the lead in
showing the way to a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is not that these former Secretaries and legislators are
saying anything very new. Their 'to do' list, including further and
deeper reductions in arsenals and US ratification of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), has long been advocated by
NGOs and most states in the "international community". Their eight
recommendations in many ways rework the "Thirteen Steps" from the
2000 NPT Review Conference for a conservative US audience.

The Hoover/Nuclear Threat Initiative (also known as 'Reykjavik
Revisited', as Shultz and others hark back to the visionary
almost-deal between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
in 1986) may become the tipping point not because of what it says,
but because of who says it. As with Nixon going to China, when
powerful sceptics or vociferous opponents of an idea come round to
realizing that it's the right thing to do, they face less
opposition - in large part because they were the opposition
(or at the very least, their earlier views had underpinned and
sustained the opposition). When the main architects of the cold war
nuclear arms race start extolling the virtues - and, more
importantly, the practicality - of a world free of nuclear weapons,
nuclear disarmament takes on a fashionable, do-able lustre, even
for long-time 'realists' who made substantial careers in the past
out of sneering at those 'idealistic' enough to argue that
deterrence did not require weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and
the world would do better without nuclear arms.

If the political agenda shifts towards nuclear disarmament
rather than attempts to maintain the current nonproliferation
regime, other things become more possible too, including ways to
engage the NPT holdouts, India, Israel and Pakistan. Devaluing
nuclear weapons' currency as an instrument of security or status
would even make a zone free of WMD in the Middle East appear more
feasible. The terrifying prospects of an eroded NPT and potential
nuclear free-for-all, starting in the Middle East, have undoubtedly
contributed to the new found enthusiasm of many born-again nuclear
abolitionists. But are they really committing themselves to
building a world without nuclear weapons, or are they still hoping
to remain nuclear 'haves' in a world with fewer nuclear
threats?

Soon after Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke in Delhi of Britain
being "a leading nation in negotiating nuclear arms reductions", UK
Defence Secretary Des Browne confirmed to Parliament that the
arsenal of 160 warheads (down from a ceiling of 200) promised as
part of the Trident renewal package in the December 2006 White
Paper, had been achieved. Speaking on February 5, 2008 to the
Conference on Disarmament, Browne further proposed that the UK
would "host a technical conference of P5 nuclear laboratories on
the verification of nuclear disarmament before the next NPT Review
Conference in 2010". The purpose would be to "enable the five
recognised nuclear weapons states to reinforce a process of mutual
confidence building: working together to solve some of [the]
difficult technical issues".

A few weeks later, French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to
reduce the airborne component of the French nuclear arsenal "by
one-third", even as he dedicated the fourth of France's
Triomphant-class nuclear submarines, Le Terrible. As a
gesture of increased transparency, Sarkozy announced that the
reductions would bring the overall French arsenal down to 300
nuclear weapons, half its cold war maximum. He also proposed "an
action plan to which I call on the nuclear powers to resolutely
commit by the 2010 NPT Conference". This included CTBT
ratifications and entry into force, together with the controversial
further step of closing the nuclear test sites, as France has done
at the Pacific atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. Sarkozy also
listed negotiations on a fissile materials ban, greater
transparency measures and "negotiations on a treaty banning short-
and intermediate-range surface-to-surface missiles".

The latter appears to endorse Russia's proposal to
internationalize the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF)
Treaty, as put forward by President Putin in October 2007. In his
statement to the CD on February 12, 2008, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov elaborated on this proposal and submitted a paper on
"Basic elements of an international legally-binding arrangement on
the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range
(ground-launched) missiles, open for broad international
accession". Like Sarkozy, Lavrov also addressed the need "to create
favourable conditions for a successful 2010 [NPT] Review
Conference". Russia's plan includes a "new, fully-fledged agreement
on further and verifiable reduction and limitation of strategic
offensive arms" to replace START I, due to expire in 2009.
Stressing strategic stability, Lavrov also announced that together
with China, Russia was formally submitting to the CD a "draft
Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer
Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects
(PPWT)".

There is much to be welcomed in these initiatives from some of
the nuclear powers. The problem is that they still go hand in hand
with deep-seated reliance on nuclear weapons. The numbers might be
coming down (too slowly for many of their citizens and the
non-nuclear countries), but the currency is kept far too high.
Sarkozy, for example, still argued that France's doctrine of
deterrence required both air-based and sea-based nuclear weapons.
Though noting that French nuclear weapons cost half the budgets
allocated to justice or transportation, he claimed it was worth it,
warning that "All those who would threaten our vital interests
would expose themselves to severe retaliation by France resulting
in damages unacceptable to them, out of proportion with their
objectives. Their centres of political, economic and military power
would be targeted on a priority basis." This doesn't sound like a
willingness to fulfil France's 2000 NPT review conference
commitment to "accomplish the total elimination" of its nuclear
arsenal any time soon.

The 2000 NPT Review Conference was widely judged a "success",
but if its agreements can be ignored or rolled back with impunity,
what is the point of working towards agreements to make the 2010
Conference a success?

Sarkozy wanted French nuclear policy to be more closely
integrated with NATO, and spoke of a mutual approach on nuclear
policy with Britain. Both nuclear arsenals are portrayed as being
for the defence of Europe. Though not formally included in
documents from the Bucharest Summit, the new buzzword among NATO's
nuclear aficionados is 'tailored deterrence'. Following on from the
2002 US Nuclear Posture Review and subsequent national security
strategies, one version of 'tailored deterrence' reduces but
retains a role for nuclear weapons but uses a mix of nuclear and
conventional weapons and other military tools to target deterrence
to a range of threats, from emerging state and non-state
adversaries to other nuclear-armed states. By contrast, Britain and
France both continue to equate nuclear weapons with deterrence, but
will consider varying yields, target sets, missions etc. to fit
different adversaries. They claim their deterrence has always been
'tailored' in this calibrated way.

But still the nuclear powers reject the kind of deterrence they
expect non-nuclear countries to rely on. Tailoring deterrence for a
full range of threats can be accomplished without nuclear
weapons, using a mixture of hard and soft power, national and
international law and courts, stigmatization of certain weapons and
uses as crimes against humanity, and other psychological, cultural
and communications factors.

It almost sounded as if the UK government grasped this when
Browne spoke to the CD of the "vision of a world free of nuclear
weapons". But for all the talk of being seen as a disarmament
laboratory, Britain, like the other nuclear weapon states, is still
clinging to nuclear weapons.

As long as that cold war reliance on nuclear weapons persists,
it is difficult to see how the NPT will ever be universalized or
fully implemented. This is the dilemma that is driving states to
seek security solutions outside the NPT framework. The 2010 review
conference will be "successful" only if it provides confidence in
the achievability of disarmament and security without nuclear
weapons.